Heini Riitahuhta

VEIL
Hundreds of sheets of paper with silkscreen printed designs are piled in a tray rack in the studio of Heini Riitahuhta (born in 1975). Her original hand-drawn motifs can be found on her table. Heini veils her ceramic pieces with Finnish flora blended with the results of her imagination. Her decors thrive in works of art and products designed for the Arabia brand. This ceramic artist is enchantedby seasonal variations.

Heini has designed the Runo (Poem 2009) series for Arabia, in which four seasons meander from one dish to another. Despite the Finnish summer being Heini's favourite season, in her previous works she has been inspired by the melancholy winter. During this period, her imagination has been filled with effervescent frost flowers and their gauze-like, delicate structures.

In her art and design, Heini combines a range of decoration techniques which the ceramic factory has used over time, consisting of hand painting, silkscreen printing and colouring with glazes. Layers of decorations create the feeling that you can dive into the decor. It fills you with the sense that it is in beautiful harmony with the glazed surface. Ceramic hexagons create a fascinating composition that grows piece by piece, containing a tiny cosmos in each of numberless fragments which, when taken together, form an expanding universe.

Alongside her studio work at the Arabia Art Department, Heini works on design projects based on a range of materials such as enamelware and textiles in Finland and Japan. She cooperates with brands such as Isetan Shinjuku, Scope, Actus, Kotonowa Furoshiki Kyoto, Kaico and Lapuan Kankurit. In 2013, her monumental artwork Arabia Flower was displayed on the Arabianranta shoreline, close to the ceramic factory in Helsinki